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Friday, June 24, 2011

I won't be posting much in the next week or so. It will be hard to leave my crumb quilt because you quilters know that once you start a project, it runs like a constant circle of thought through your mind until it's finished.

There are 10 in my family, and we have two foster girls as well right now (well, one left this past week). Three of my children and I are going to Ohio Monday thru Saturday of next week. My parents are coming FROM Ohio tonight for Emily's wedding shower at our church Sunday night. Emily, Susanna, Rachel, and I are driving 5 hours to a wedding shower in Georgia tomorrow (and back tomorrow night). When I'm in Ohio, in addition to visiting with my parents and my sister's family (she has 10 children), I plan on sewing some clothing. Hopefully I will complete Emily's flower girl's dress and the last bridemaid's dress as well. Only two dresses...how long could THAT take (insert maniacal laugh track).

Our other foster girl is leaving this coming Thursday. Since four of us will be gone when she leaves (she is leaving this afternoon to spend the weekend with a friend while my parents are here)...we are having a combined going away/early birthday party for her for lunch today. I need to get hopping decorating the cake, making pizza crusts, cleaning the house...

So, thank you to those of you who keep in touch with me via my blog. You have enriched my life with your friendships. I will be updating from Ohio if I have time.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

...laying on my cutting table, that is. I know, "lying" is proper, but I wanted to reference the Twelve Days of Christmas so we could think some cool thoughts.

For the border for my crumb quilt, I need 138 flying geese units. As of tonight I have 71 completely finished (pieced, pressed, and trimmed). I often get questions about how to mix up the colors in a scrappy quilt.

You can see from the picture that I took the time to carefully trim each unit. There was a time when I did not do that. And I still don't do it all the time, but for borders, yes! I will need to measure my quilt center as well as my borders to measure for "floater" inner borders. That will be explained when the big moment comes!

Here is my plan for the geese units...I am pinning 10 of a similar color/value together. That makes it easier to count where I am in the process as well as keeping the similar values together. When I reach the magic number (in this case 138), I will deal out the four borders like dealing cards. The sides have more than the top and bottom, but I will deal out all the greens until I run out (perhaps adding a few more to the side piles). Then I'll continue with each color.

After the color balance is good, I'll arrange each border mixing up the colors. Then I'll use the leader/ender method to sew each border together.

Another good reason to pin together like colors is that since I'm cutting all of these from scraps, I can see if I need to balance things out with more of a particular color. I know now I need some browns and oranges. I have lots of gold, blue, purple (my favorite!), greens, and reds.

~Joan, who is voiceless and still finds it amusing when people whisper back to her :)

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

I made two tiny changes to my quilt top. I toyed with the idea of removing my initials and replacing them with regular crumb blocks, but then just could not do it. In person they don't stand out that much, and this will be a lap or bed quilt, so the whole thing won't be visible (well, not THAT much). At least not as much as if it was a wall quilt!

I removed two very light/bright yellow squares and replaced them with dark orange. They are the ones two to the left of my "J" block and three up from my "J" block. See? The initial blocks are landmarks!! Every time I glanced over at my design wall, I saw the yellow squares, which means they stood out a tad too much.

My latest sewing project has been cutting and sewing the flying geese so my quilt can look just like Natasha's. Slow going, but I've only little crumbs of time in which to sew.

Took Susie in to get 4 wisdom teeth removed today. She did well. Sore a lot faster than my other children, but a real trooper.